Ex-model sentenced

Chicago TribuneCHICAGO TRIBUNE

For relatives of Douglas Meis, an empty chair at the Thanksgiving dinner table has been a painful reminder of his absence since a woman trying to kill herself drove into a car carrying Meis and two co-workers, killing the three men instead.

On Monday, the victims' families learned that the driver, former model Jeanette Sliwinski, could be out of jail by the time they mark the fourth anniversary of the Chicago musicians' deaths in July 2009.

Cook County Circuit Judge Garritt Howard, who found Sliwinski guilty but mentally ill on reckless homicide charges Oct. 26, imposed an 8-year prison sentence during an emotional hearing in the Skokie courtroom where he presided over her bench trial. Prosecutors had asked that Sliwinski of Morton Grove receive the maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

After the hearing Monday, prosecutors informed the victims' family members that Sliwinski, 25, would have to serve only four years in prison if she stays out of trouble as she has for more than two years at Cook County Jail while awaiting trial.

"I think it's an absolute tragedy," said Meis' youngest brother, Scott. "It's just kind of ridiculous that someone is going to walk away in two or three years after taking three innocent lives."

Prosecutors originally sought a first-degree murder conviction and a 30-year prison term for Sliwinski for taking the lives of Meis, 29, and fellow musicians Michael Dahlquist, 39, and John Glick, 35, but Howard convicted her of the lesser charge.

The men were on their lunch break from Shure, a Niles electronics company, at the time of the wreck. In deciding her sentence, Howard said he took into account the lack of Sliwinski's criminal history and her diminished mental health.

A defense psychiatrist had testified that Sliwinski, who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, suffered from a bipolar disorder with psychotic episodes, leading her to crash her car at 87 mph into stopped traffic at a Skokie stoplight.

She told authorities she had gotten in a fight with her mother in the family's Morton Grove home July 14, 2005, before she got in her car, drove east on Dempster Street and slammed into Dahlquist's car.

Sliwinski, who wiped back tears during testimony from two relatives and a friend of the three victims, spoke in court for the first time Monday since her trial began, apologizing to about two dozen relatives and friends of the victims who attended her trial.

"There's not a day that goes by I do not think about the grief and the pain I have caused," she said, occasionally glancing in their direction. "I have never meant to hurt anybody. I'm sorry."

Sliwinski's words did not erase the anger still felt by Scott Meis and others.

"It felt really insincere. It felt really fake. It was an ending with just a dagger in our hearts," he said.

Defense attorney Tom Breen agreed the deaths of the three men were "senseless," but he blamed the doctors who had been treating Sliwinski for depression before the crash.

"She did everything to get help," Breen said. "Had she been properly treated ... this event would never, ever have occurred."